Ekphrastic writing means, essentially, writing about a piece of art. Ekphrastic writing is having a resurgence lately and it’s so easy to get involved. If you’ve never written a piece of Ekphrastic writing, check out this poem by Writing Academy graduate August van Stralen in the Ekphrastic Journal. If you want to get started writing Ekphrastic pieces, there are a couple ways to start. Find a piece of art that speaks to you. Let the image or the colors guide your pen. You can

Coming up next week at the Writing Academy, we are so excited to have author, performer, and all around great person, Melissa Brayden talking to the class about giving an author reading. Melissa walks participants through the important concept of nailing that author reading every time. (Even if you’re an introvert!) After Melissa’s class, we give the students a chance to do their own author reading for each other. It’s a great, safe way to practice performing in front of a gr

Welcome back from our administrative break! We came busting back from vacation with a stunning class on writing sex by the inimitable Karelia Stetz-Waters. Karelia led the WA students through the ins and outs of writing sex in a safe, entertaining, and sometimes hilarious class. Of course, we acknowledge that not all authors write sex. Some people do a fade-scene even in romances. And some speculative, horror, and mystery writers don’t feel a need for intimacy in their books

The GCLS Writing Academy is always growing, always changing. We’re constantly adding new classes, hiring new instructors, and reading up on current pedagogies to give our students a quality experience in creative writing education. One way we work to improve our program is by offering a variety of scholarships, both full and partial, to make the course accessible to everyone. We’ll be showcasing all the scholarships we offer over the next couple months. Today, we’re focused o

The Writing Academy is excited to share 2021 graduate Charlotte Paige and her recent success publishing a short story “Screen Time Up 16%” in Screen Door Review, an online journal for poetry and stories under 1,000 words by queer Southern writers. You can find the story here Charlotte, we’re happy for you and we love the story. What drew you to the idea? I’m very interested in desire and the journey from understanding what one wants to setting out to get it to ultimately havi

Today, we’re excited to feature a guest post from Writing Academy graduates, Rita Potter and Lori G. Matthews who met during their time in the academy and got together to create an excellent project! Rita Potter: How did two students from the Writing Academy decide to collaborate on a zany superhero story? I’ll let Lori tell you how it happened. Lori G. Matthews: The GCLS Writing Academy seemed like a perfect environment to hone my writing skills, and the small class size, ad

This week, we’re talking about point of view in the writing academy. Choosing the point of view for your novel is sometimes the hardest decision to make. Do you want to stay in the head of your main character? Do you want to switch back and forth between two? Are you looking for an up-close and personal experience with a first-person narrator? Or perhaps you want the distance offered by an omniscient narrator who doesn’t speak in the voice of any of the characters but knows a